11/14/09

With the usual caveats about sour grapes and being a sore loser and so on, it must be said that, before tonight, I had never seen such openly corrupt officiating in person. I had seen it on TV when the SEC was trying to protect Florida's and Alabama's paths to the BCS. I had seen it on TV when the Big Ten was trying to protect Iowa's path to the BCS. Now the Big East has a chance to clear an extra $4.5 million if Pitt and Cincinnati both qualify. I saw the Big East's corruption on TV when West Virginia got hosed out of a fumble recovery and Cincinnati scored a touchdown. And now I've seen it in person. The Pitt fans surrounding us were visibly embarrassed by the time the game was over.

There is a built-in financial incentive for conferences to protect their own teams under the current system. Yet, Notre Dame continues to sign contracts that provide for the opponents' conferences to provide the officials. After firing the coach, which it seems they'll have to do pretty soon, the next step is to get the officiating contracts fixed. If I'm a whiner then so be it, but I spent a lot of money on this weekend and I was robbed of the opportunity to see how the game would turn out.

The fight for which I volunteered did almost materialize though. A fella was running his mouth on the way out of the stadium. Once it was too much for us to take, my brothers and I angled over in his direction. The fella suddenly found that he didn't have as many friends as he thought he had. So he scurried into an intersection with some cops around and we continued out to my car. A fitting non-conclusion to the day.